When I lost my mum, back in 2016, I was at a total loss. Some 20 years earlier I had lost my dad, and I had become used to the constant ache of his absense. But this was something new, something far more painful.

After the pain of the funeral, the agony of selling my childhood home and the tedium of the endless paperwork, I knew that I needed to do something positive.

That something was a three-month trip around Scotland. The country just to my north had always somehow been calling me, to her hills, her isles, her endless landscapes. I knew that I could get lost here, that I could heal.

And so I packed up the car and headed north. Over three months I healed, a little, and I fell head over heels in love with Scotland.